Word: parton
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...late '70s, however, the fees suddenly doubled and tripled. When the Riviera signed Dolly Parton for a widely publicized $350,000 a week in 1979, every other entertainer in town put a call through to his agent. As Jenkins remembers it: "Every other performer with an ego the size of the Astrodome said, 'If that big-bosomed broad is making that kind of money, I should be too.' " Two years ago, the bubble burst: for only the second time in its 50-year history as a gambling resort, Las Vegas felt the effects of a national recession...
Burt Reynolds plays the beleaguered sheriff who has tolerated the Chicken Ranch, in part because he loves Mona, the madam (Dolly Parton). One has never seen him so glumly tentative in a role. Parton plays Mona as if Mae West had been cryonically preserved but someone didn't quite finish the job of unfreezing her while restoring her to life. What is mostly missing is a sense of comic authority. Parton has interpolated a couple of her plaintive country songs, which do not fit the brassy Broadway banalities of Carol Hall's basic score. On the other hand...
...Rocky, Grease, Star Trek and The Thing will tempt old adherents. The Road Warrior and Blade Runner will offer up eye-catching punk-rock apocalypses. Robin Williams will attempt to enter The World According to Garp. Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen have new movies, and Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton will sing and dance their way through The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Even so, Poltergeist's intelligence in confecting disaster, its honest laughs and spine-snapping chills-from upended kitchen chairs to ghostly vapors and a gaping, horrid hell mouth-should lead it to the head...
...night of songs, 20 in all. Most have been written by Jim Warm, who also plays the chief gas jockey. If none are memorable, all are worth listening to, from a sultry Be Good or Be Gone, sung by Rhetta (Cass Morgan), to a very funny The Night Dolly Parton Was Almost Mine, sung by Mark Hardwick...
...Parton's picture hangs prominently on the station wall, and her spirit is constantly invoked, as if she were the patron saint of such enterprises. Though the songs do not always have the authentic hillbilly twang, the spirit is right, as cheery, relaxed and amiable as the first really warm day of spring. Dolly would probably approve...